Introduction

Abstract

This chapter cites the key ideas supporting global city research and juxtaposes them in a disaggregated way against the ways key elites are shaping urban development, from planners and architects to government officers and corporate managers. It provides viewpoints about the urban development, as well as the global urban imagination. It also addresses the inquiry into the imagination that stands behind the global city-speak and diverse urban aspirations that bolster it. The chapter discusses imagination, which is the symbolic power to cast and recast its orientation, the future of cities, and globalization. It refers to the progressive and cosmopolitan way of thinking about the “global” in the “global city” that can be found, fought, and socialized.